Foreign Minister Heiko Maas opened Berlin Foreign Policy Forum

On 27 November, Körber Foundation in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office hosted the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum. Under the headline “Unite or Decline: Europe’s Future in an Unruly World” the Forum set the stage for discussions on the most important foreign policy challenges for Germany and Europe.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
(Photo: Marc Darchinger)

How can Germany keep the European Union together and contribute to the debate about its future? What role can Europe play to prevent a further de-stabilization of the Middle East? How will relations with Russia and China develop? And how can we address the emerging rift in the transatlantic alliance? Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas opened the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum with a keynote speech together with the Foreign Minister of the Slovak Republic Miroslav Lajčák, followed by a discussion on how to keep the European Union united, with a particular focus on Western and Central Eastern European states.

At the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum, Körber Foundation presented the second edition of its foreign policy publication THE BERLIN PULSE. It includes the results of a representative survey on the attitudes of Germans to foreign policy: Has Germany really done enough to end the war in Syria? Was the EU Eastern enlargement in 2004 the right decision? And is China’s growing influence positive or negative? Prominent international authors, such as Kersti Kaljulaid, President of Estonia, Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and Mateusz Morawiecki, Prime Minister of Poland express their hopes and expectations for German foreign policy in 2019.